Forks, Knives, & Spoons
by I am the Creator God
Summary: A-H: Shunned from her adopted Forks after a bitter break-up, Bella starts her own diner in LA, where the usual cast of characters work and eat. When Bella decides to play matchmaker, will everyone find love because or in spite of her meddling?
1. B: Matchmakers

_Author's note: _"And now for something completely different..." Which is, I know, the worst thing a fan of a WIP fic could hear from its author. Especially when it's in the opening author's note of a brand-new fic that is definitely _not_ a one-shot. Before you start lobbing tomatoes, hear me out. This is, most assuredly, going to be a much shorter fic than A Legendary Bourn and will, believe it or not, help in the creation of Book Two. Here's why: I have been paralyzed with fear that I am horribly incapable of writing a love story. Unfortunately, that's all Book Two is. So, I started this little gem of a piece, with the logical assumption that if I can write a fluffy All-Human, canon-pairing love story, I will be better prepared to write the epic romance that is Jacob and Renesmee. Perhaps I can somewhat redeem myself by letting you in on some good news: Book Two will be written from Renesmee's point-of-view!

_Stephenie Meyer_: It's still all of your characters under there, I've just taken away their cool abilities and dropped them off somewhere sunny and warm. If you don't recognize them, it's because you wrote them right the first time.

* * *

**Bella:  
**_Matchmakers_

I sat on a stool behind the counter in my nearly-empty diner, toying with the braided leather bracelet on my wrist while I thought of the boy who had weaved it for me. Jacob Black was probably asleep right now, wrapped around his leggy, busty, _perfect_ girlfriend. I shook my head, frustrated. I didn't even have an excuse for being as completely jealous of _her_ or as irrationally upset with _him_ as I am. I broke his heart first and I'd just have to learn to deal with the consequences.

My move to my police chief father's too-rainy town of Forks in the middle of my junior year of high school left me minus the only friend I had even had, my mom, Renée. Being free from the responsibility of mothering my mother, suddenly gave me the time and resolve to act like a teenager. So I did. I landed a group of friends at school and found a best friend in Angela, who would later become my roommate for four years at UDub. I politely turned a few boys down until I was asked out by one who I didn't want to say _no_ to. And so I got my first kiss and my first boyfriend.

Our romance had been nice and sweet, like Jake himself. We were friends first, brought together by our best-friend fathers, and then suddenly we were something more. So easily we didn't even realize we had, we fell in love. His friends became mine and mine became his until we had somehow managed to merge the kids from the La Push reservation in with the kids from Forks. Rainless Friday nights we spent at bonfires with our big group at First Beach on the rez, wrapped up in each other's arms until the embers in the fire died and everyone grudgingly went home.

We never had much money between us so our dates usually consisted of a home-cooked meal at his house made by yours truly followed by heavy petting in his garage out back. Sometimes we pulled my truck in so he could "tune it" or "change its oil" and we would lay across the cabin's bench, Jake's long legs sticking out the open driver's-side door. Our virginities were lost on a blanket in the truck bed as an early-spring's rain pelted the garage's shelter, masking our incessant moans and the truck's squeaky shocks. It had been perfect. _He_ had been perfect. I let go of the bracelet, sighing quietly. Get over it, Bella. We all knows _he_ has.

A timer went off in the kitchen and I pushed off the countertop as I stood, walking to the back to take the pies out of the oven. It was going on five in the morning and the breakfast crowd would be coming in soon, taking my mind off of Jake for a few hours. Hopefully.

When I graduated with my degree in English four years ago, I never thought I'd own a diner. I never thought I'd be a New York Times bestselling author, either, though. After my book ostracized me from the only place I had ever really considered home, I thought a change of scenery would do me good. Not that I had much of a choice. If pitchforks and torches were still in vogue, that's how I would have been run out of Forks.

As my step-dad's minor league baseball career had winded down, he had gotten a job as a coach at the University of New Mexico. As soon as Renée heard about me moving away from Forks, she had wanted me to move to Albuquerque to be close to her. I admit, I had considered it. Up until my move to Forks in high school, we hadn't spent a day apart, and I missed my mom, I missed my best friend.

In my stubbornness, I had decided that I wanted to assert my independence for once in my life. I wanted to live on my own, without a safety net. Of course, I had a safety net in the form of a growing bank account, but still. If I couldn't have my old life the way I wanted it, I was going to make a completely new one. Renée understood, at least she put on a brave face and said she did.

I only knew one thing about where I was moving: after eight years in the dreary northwest, I wanted warmth again. If the Olympic Peninsula was known for its overcast skies, I wanted to find the place known for its sunny ones. A quick Google search of "most sunny days in the US" had given me my answer. I'd crossed the desert cities off of the list first. Having lived next to a rain forest for years, I hadn't been willing to live in extremes anymore. With close to 200 days of sunshine, Los Angeles was the biggest, sunniest city I could find.

With my half of my first royalties check, I boarded a plane to LAX. I immediately decided that I didn't want to live near the beach. Even if _these_ shores weren't covered in rocks, the waves and cliffs and sunsets invoked too many memories. I rented a car and drove inland, past the too-congested heart of the city that wasn't my speed at all, until I hit the suburbs. Driving up and down streets lined with perfectly manicured lawns, I fell in love with the architecture of Pasadena homes. A week later, I was in escrow.

It took three months of staring at the blinking cursor on a blank Word document to make me realize that my next book wasn't going to just fall on my lap, which came as no great surprise as I had always suspected that my first book was a fluke. Every day people in the outside world were finding it for the first time, reviewers were praising it, and it was creeping onto bestseller's lists. More than anything, though, I just wanted it to disappear. Still, writing was what I wanted to do with my life and I figured I should at least _try _again. Get back on the horse and all that.

That led me to try and pinpoint the exact factors that had brought about my first novel. I was in my last two years of college when I wrote it, using writing as a nice distraction between reading for classes and writing essays. Though I doubted very much that my paper on Brönte's Heathcliff as a Byronic hero helped to create even a sentence of my first novel, I couldn't deny that I did my best work while on campus. There was something about the movement of crowds of people rushing to _learn_ that was inspiring. Something nice about the snippets of conversations and arguments on Nietzche and theoretical physics and evolutionary psychology that I'd catch while I walked around campus, gathering my thoughts.

The next day, I had packed my laptop and headed out to find a new university. CalTech was closest to my house but, to be honest, I was a little intimidated by it. With my luck I'd have one of my Clumsy Bella moments and fall into the next Einstein, causing _him_ to fall down a flight of stairs and suffer severe brain damage. An over-exaggeration, I know, but I wasn't going to chance it. USC wasn't too far away and I drove there first, but the neighborhood freaked me out and I got back on the freeway as soon as I could. Of course, I got on the wrong freeway to head back home, something I'd been doing a lot of since I had decided that I'd been in LA long enough to not have to rely on my dealer-installed GPS map, and didn't realize it until a sign informed me half an hour later that the freeway was ending and I was two exits away from the beach. As lucky coincidence would have it, I was also two exits away from UCLA, which is where I ended up.

I didn't write anything that day, either, but I felt inspired to write and figured that that had to count for something. It wasn't until I was making dinner that night that I realized that cooking everyday was part of the writing equation, too. I had completely forgotten that the mindlessness of preparing the simple dishes I made for Angela and I had allowed my mind to wander onto thoughts of plots and characters and settings.

I spent a month driving each day in the late morning the twenty miles to UCLA where I would walk aimlessly around as I mulled ideas over in my head. It couldn't compare to the beauty of the springtime cherry blossoms in the Quad or the stained glass windows in the Suzzallo library or even the Mary Gates Hall common room at UDub, but I had to admit that the campus had its own charm. Then, I'd brave the rush hour traffic back home, make dinner, and think some more.

At first, I had completely rejected the ever-evolving idea for my second book. It seemed to me to be even more self-indulgent than my first novel and I was afraid it would only cause myself more strife and heartbreak. I hadn't known at the time how valid those fears really were.

Six months later, after having finished half of the book, I hit a wall. My daily jaunts to UCLA weren't doing it for me anymore. It wasn't a coincidence that I had received a phone call from Angela around that time, during which she casually mentioned that Jacob had finally used _his _half of my book's royalties and was opening up his own garage. I didn't sleep soundly for a week. Jake had sworn up and down that he'd never touch that money. What had changed? Had he moved on so quickly? Was there really no hope left for us? My book wouldn't come and I had simply stopped trying.

As I had prepared for my first Christmas away from Forks in seven years, my depression turned into anger. I could use the money to move on, too! Sure, I had used some to relocate to LA and to buy a car and a house once I got down here, but I hadn't moved on, I had run away. Jake was opening his own shop, a dream he had had for as long as I had known him. He had been getting better while I had been stuck wallowing. My new manuscript, if it was even possible, had begun looking more and more pathetic.

Renée and Phil spent the holidays with me, it was the first Christmas I had had with my mother in years and I found myself enjoying the holiday spirit with her around. I had a feeling she was behind the call I got from my dad, Charlie, on Christmas Eve. We hadn't spoken since I left town nearly a year before but our conversation still didn't last very long. He couldn't talk about Forks or Jake or Jake's dad, Billy, and I couldn't talk about my writing or LA or how badly I had screwed up my life. That had left fishing stories.

My mom couldn't understand why things were so strained between us or why I couldn't bear to go back to Forks. She was too wrapped up in being proud of my accomplishments to see the broader implications they had had on my life. Still, when Jacob's 23rd birthday came a few weeks later and I had wanted to get out of the house to take my mind off of all the plans we had once made, she let me go without nagging to tag along.

I had driven the familiar route to the West-side without even realizing it. It was odd that it had become my haven of sorts. The quarter hadn't begun yet and campus was empty. For once, I had walked off-campus, just to see what lined the few blocks on the south side of the school in Westwood. I'd been surprised to see so many mom-and-pop stores because the UVillage in Seattle was more like a mall.

As I waited on a corner for a light to change, I had caught a glimpse of myself in an empty storefront's window. In the eleven months in LA, nothing about me had changed. I still looked like the shell of the girl I had been up until a year and a half ago. My ponytail hung limply down my back and I had realized with a start that I hadn't once gotten a trim since I'd moved. My old UDub sweatshirt that I had been conveniently forgetting once belonged to Jacob was too many sizes too big and, paired with a pair of old, holey jeans, made me look worn-down by life and all of sixteen years old at the same time. Across the street, reflected beside me in the window, was a bookstore. A poster-sized sticker attached to the window was displaying the all-too-familiar cover of my book.

I had focused my eyesight beyond the window, so as not to see the perfect illustration of the ironic truth of my shitty life: My book was in its prime and I was at rock bottom. It was then that I had realized that the empty store I was standing in front of was some sort of restaurant. I chose to see it as a sign. The next day, I had called the number under "for lease."

Renée had been thrilled. She hadn't cared that I had absolutely no business opening up my own diner, she had just been excited to see _me_ excited about something for a change. Phil, who was used to my mother's own hare-brained antics but had always, as I had, considered myself to have more of a head on my shoulder, had raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

I don't know how long I had been idly reminiscing when Emmett came into the kitchen, grinning. "A cowboy for your cowboy, Bellsie," he said as he slammed a massive hand down on the top of my sub-zero freezer. Emmett had developed a fondness for diner lingo since he started working here. It had annoyed me at first but, like all things Emmett, I had grown to find it amusing.

The noise woke me up a little and when my brain caught up to what he had said, I grinned back at him. "Jasper's here?"

"He sure is." He raised his eyebrows up and down a few times.

Good. I needed a distraction. "Tell him it'll be right out and make him some fresh coffee."

"Sure thing, boss lady." I rolled my eyes as I opened the fridge to get the eggs to make Jasper his omelet.

Emmett McCarty had been the first person I hired and so also the first friend I made in LA. Weeks before I opened, I had been lugging in boxes from my double-parked SUV when I tripped on the side of the curb and silverware went flying. Thankfully, I had already unloaded the fragile plates. Emmett had been walking down the street and had helped me pick everything up. Then he had helped me unload the rest and rearrange furniture and hang things on the wall. I bought him lunch to thank him and when he had asked me if I was hiring I laughed and told him that I think I already owed him back pay.

Emmett was two years older than me and the lowest coach in the totem pole of UCLA assistant football coaches. He had played for the Bruins a decade ago but he hurt his knee before he could go any further. He regretted not taking his studies seriously when he had the chance and had jumped at the offer to work for the team, especially since it meant that he could get discounted tuition. He only takes a class a quarter and none during football season, so he's not very close to finishing his degree. Still it's commendable that he's trying to further his education.

Emmett passes his nighttime shifts in the same way I do, half the time we spend joking around with each other, we work when someone comes in, and the rest of the time we're bored. He tries to study for class, but most of the time he watches TV or falls asleep. In fact, he sleeps so much during his shifts that he has a hammock strung up in the storage room from two of the exposed beams. I, in turn, try to write, but most of the time I read books or go online and order more. In fact, the shelves under the counter were not filled with condiments, but paperbacks.

I was sliding Jasper's omelet onto a plate when I heard a Toby Keith song starting on the jukebox. I paid way too much money for that thing because it's one of those digital ones that's connected to the internet and can get any song. I figured it would be worth it when I could put whatever I want on at three in the morning when there's no one else here, and it is. But, it _isn't_ worth it when Emmett and Jasper get together and play the worst country music you could imagine before five in the morning.

I walked out of the swinging doors backwards only to have the plate ripped from my hands and practically dropped on the counter before I was airborne. Strong hands gripped my waist and I closed my eyes as I was spun around the room. I sighed to myself and held on, knowing that Emmett was only going to put me down when he wanted to. I just prayed there were no customers around to see it. The song ended and I was dropped unceremoniously onto the stool beside Jasper, who was setting down a bottle of Tabasco sauce bottle that he'd been shaking maniacally over his western omelet.

I gripped his forearm as the world righted itself around me and rested my head against the side of his shoulder. "Morning, Jasper."

"Mornin', doll face." He turned his head to kiss my forehead. Emmett winked at me from the other side of the counter. I rolled my eyes.

I know what it looks like when he calls me by terms of endearment and gives me chaste kisses. I know that everyone else who works here thinks that we're secretly dating. And, really, it's not unreasonable that they do, considering we _did_ go out on a couple of dates behind everyone's backs after my last disaster with Jacob. What they don't know, though, is that Jasper and I will never be an _us._ Not for lack of trying, either. We both tried so hard it was pathetic. After every date, though, it was blatantly obvious that the past however many hours had _only_ been "Jasper and Bella hanging out" and nothing more. That's not to say we didn't go home with each other a few times, but we stopped that because it's a terrible feeling to be unable to really make love to someone when you actually _do_ love them. Even so, we're only human and, sometimes when we're horny or if we've had a good day or because it's Tuesday...well, we've been known to slip.

I shot a quick glance around the room and noticed that the couple that was here before I'd gone into the back had left. The place was empty. Just the way I like it. At least no one noticed Emmett tossing me around like a rag doll. I got up and started busing their table, talking to Jasper over my shoulder. "You meeting with your advisor this morning?"

He nodded before swallowing. "I wanted to clear a few things up with her before she leaves for a month-long vacation in Hawaii."

"Must be nice," I said as I carried dirty dishes back to the counter. Jasper raised one of his eyebrows at me, which I pointedly ignored. He was the only person who knew that I could walk away from this diner at any time and be on the first plane to Hawaii or Paris or anywhere else if I really wanted to. He didn't know how I got my money, but he knew I had it.

The fact of the matter is, I completely expected to pay my employees and the rent and everything else that went into running this place out of the royalties checks that kept accumulating. I had figured that if I was lucky, I'd break even every month. Nope. This place was a cash cow, mostly because it was the only place around here open 24 hours.

I was glad, though. The income meant I could pay my employees, who had all become good friends to me, _extremely_ well. They didn't know it, but the "bonus" I gave them at the end of the week on top of their paycheck was a percentage of the profits. I only kept a small amount which I saved towards birthday and Christmas bonuses and things around the diner I knew we would all like. Last year, for example, I put in a flat screen with a satellite TV hook-up because I wanted to make sure we could all watch Emmett on the sidelines at the football games. What I didn't know, though, was that it would turn the diner into a virtual sports bar every Saturday during the season. The TV had paid for itself after three games.

I waited for Jasper to finish his eggs and then took all the dishes back and left them soaking in the sink. I smirked to myself. I'd make Emmett put them in the dishwasher later. I mixed the ingredients for a few loaves of bread together, put them in the oven, and set the timer. When I walked back out of the kitchen, Emmett was sprawled across a booth, yawning as he flipped through channels. Jasper had a thick book open in front of him, the clean page of a notebook at his side, and a pen in his hand. I sat on my own stool across from him and watched him work.

In the fall, Jasper would be starting his last year in his history PhD program. Having the summer off gave him ample opportunity to put a big dent in his dissertation and he wasn't wasting it. He had a young-looking face that belied his fast-approaching thirtieth birthday, but it wasn't babyish. I studied his longish golden blond waves as they fell into his matching amber eyes. I had seen Jasper happy, had seen him laugh until he cried, had even seen him filled with lust; but, paradoxically, though he always seemed to feed off of the mood of those around him, his default face was a blank mask. Only his eyes showed his sadness. Worse than sadness, even. His hopelessness. Sometimes I wondered if people thought the same about me.

There were very few open books within our diner family, Jasper Whitlock was not the exception. I know that he grew up in Texas and doesn't ever mention his parents. I know that he was in the Army and doesn't take his dog tags off. Not even during sex. I know that he has scars on his back that he's ashamed of and doesn't like me to kiss. I know he gets nightmares as often as I do and that we both only crash when we're too tired to dream.

He looked up and caught me staring. I smiled. He winked. "How's the writing coming?" he asked.

I tucked some of his hair behind his ear. "Shouldn't I be the one asking _you_ that?" He dropped it after that, like I knew he would. The truth is, I haven't written a thing since my second book. Not one word. There's no way I'm going to tell Jasper that I finished what he had seen me writing all last year, though. He'd want to read it. He didn't ask a lot but in the past month, since school had ended for him and he'd been a lot less preoccupied, I'd had to skirt the issue at least once a week.

I busied myself in the kitchen for an hour and a half, only having to fill two breakfast orders, and then I heard Emmett boom, "Esme!" I looked at the time, six-thirty. She was early, like always. I went out front to meet her.

I tried to look angry when I accused, "You're early." Just like she tried to look innocent when she glanced at the clock and asked, "Am I?" Jasper and Emmett laughed at our little exchange.

Esme Platt was in her mid to late thirties, but she could claim she was a decade younger and no one would bat an eye. She's a few inches taller than me, has deep cheek dimples, flawless skin, and a much prettier caramel brown color to her hair and eyes than my flat dark brown. Still, she manages to come across as motherly, even to Emmett and Jasper, who are only six years younger than she is. It's this mothering nature that leads her to be at least thirty minutes early to work every day so she can try to talk _me_ into leaving early. She hates that I take such a long shift overnight and has gotten it in her head that one day I will be so tired driving home in the morning that I'll crash my car and end up in the hospital. What she doesn't know is that I welcome the exhaustion. It's harder to think and remember and _feel_ when you're tired.

She came over to hug me. "Good morning, dear." She held my upper arms as she stepped back to appraise me. "You look tired. Jasper," she called, snaking an arm around my waist while still holding my gaze. "Doesn't she look tired? You really should drive her home today."

I rolled my eyes at her obvious attempt at matchmaking. "He can't, Esme. He has an appointment with Dr. Waugh this morning."

I had to hold back a smile as her entire face fell into a disappointed pout. She opened her mouth to say something but was cut off by the door opening. A balding, overweight man in a ill-fitting suit walked in. "Good morning," the four of us greeted in unison. He looked taken aback by the empty booths and our warm welcome and I wondered what we looked like. Esme and I were standing behind the counter with our arms around each other's waists, Jasper had looked up from his book, and Emmett had quickly reached for the remote to lower the volume on the TV. I suppose, if you took us out of the diner setting, it would seem like he had just walked into somebody's living room.

Esme cleared her throat as she bent down to put her purse away behind the counter and that seemed to knock the man out of his daze long enough to pick a table. Jasper went back to his work and I followed Esme into the kitchen as Emmett took the man's drink order.

"The works," I guessed once we were behind the privacy of the swinging kitchen door.

"For his heart's sake, I hope not." It was a game that Emmett had created that ended up sticking. We all tried to guess the customer's order before they could place it. The only thing we won were bragging rights and no one but Emmett really took the time to remember how many orders they'd guessed right by the end of their shift.

Jasper came into the kitchen. "Who guessed heart attack on a rack?"

Esme gasped. "No!" That was the problem with Esme working as a cook, every time someone ordered something unhealthy, she wanted to go and try to talk them out of it. On more than one occasion I had seen her sneak low-fat dressing and garden burgers over on people. I'm surprised we didn't get more complaints.

Thankful that I had left half of the baking ingredients out, I was already kneading the biscuit dough when I saw Esme at the fridge, reaching in for the turkey sausages. "Esme!"

"Oh, please. Do you honestly think he'll notice?"

Jasper laughed at the package in her hand as he tore off a bit of my dough, balled it up, and tossed it in his mouth. I slapped the back of his hand.

"Hey!" He shook his hand in the air to rid it of the stinging.

"I already fed you!" He shrugged. "If you're going to be in here, make yourself useful and put the dishes in the washer." He looked over at the sink, quickly spun on his heels, and went back out into the front.

"You should be nicer to him," Esme scolded in a sing-song voice.

I shoved the trays with the biscuits into the oven as I muttered, "I _am_ nice to him." Sometimes it was a pain in the ass keeping our clandestine non-relationship a secret. We knew it would only make things worse for us if we told them we had gone out, though, so we just put up with it, knowing that they all have the best intentions.

The morning rush began then and I didn't notice how much time had passed until it was a little before eight-thirty and Jasper came in to say he was going to his meeting. "Ooh!" I ran out of kitchen while he gave Esme a kiss goodbye. I blushed when I realized that I had banged the hell out of the door as I ran through it and half the people in the dining room had turned their heads towards me. Jasper came out behind me chuckling softly as he rubbed my back reassuringly.

"What was all that about?"

I grabbed a pen and a ordering pad off the counter and opened the lid on my laptop. "I was going to ask you to check a book out for me at the library." I opened up the notepad document that I had saved the book's call number in and jotted it down. "It must be out of print or something because Amazon doesn't have it."

"Am I going to get another late fee because of this?"

I whipped my head around and when I spoke, my voice was loud with indignation. "How was I supposed to know that Emmett would hide the book in the _freezer?_ Do you know that I looked for _three_ _days_ before I—"

He clapped a hand over my mouth and looked at the room over my shoulder. "I was just joking, doll face," he said, softly. I blushed again when I heard Emmett's laughter behind me, realizing I had just caused another small disturbance. I ducked my head, pushed the paper into Jasper's chest, and slunk back into the kitchen. He followed me. "Sorry."

I shook my head. "It's not your fault I'm a spaz."

He opened up his arms, bent his neck down and gave me a look of sheer apology from under his lashes. I walked into them. "If you don't mind waiting around for an hour or so, I'll drive you home."

I stepped away to look at him. "But then you'll be stuck out at my place all day."

He shrugged. "Your place is quieter than mine with my roommates or here with the lunch crowd. As long as you don't mind having to be back here in time for my shift."

I looked over at Esme, who was walking around the kitchen with a smug look on her face. I sighed internally before answering him. "That works for me."

"'Kay. I'll be back in an hour." He kissed my forehead and walked out the doors only to lean his head back in to wink and say, "Emmett wants you two to go check the ice."

Esme rolled her eyes but I giggled. When Emmett had gone online to find all of the diner doublespeak he could, he also found a way to tell us he was checking out a girl. The twist he had invented was to come up with a sly way of rating the girls, too. I waited for the doors to settle before racing over to peek out their small windows. It didn't take long to spot the girl that Emmett had been checking out.

"Oh, Esme," I whispered into the door, even though no one could possibly hear me. "You should _see_ this girl. Or should I say, you should see this girl's _girls._ She could float to China on those suckers!" Esme laughed, taking the french toast off of the grill and putting them beside the bacon already on the plate. She picked up the other plate of pancakes and sausage links and walked towards the door. I moved out of the way, taking the plates from her hand so she could look out the windows. "She's not very attractive, though, and does it really count as blond if it's closer to orange?" She laughed. "What do you give her?"

"I don't know. We gave that redhead the other day a five. Is she as bad as that?"  
I took another look. "At least the redhead was naturally unattractive, this girl paid good money to look that way."

"True." She sighed. "Five it is."

I walked out the doors and put the food at the end of the counter next to Emmett who was pouring some orange juice. As he dropped off the juice and the plates, I made a round of filling emptying coffee mugs. We met back up at the counter.

"Did you check the ice?" He wagged one of his eyebrows.

Oh, he was not going to like our estimate. I smirked and raised my chin. "Esme and I both agree that there are only _five_ servings of ice left."

"_Five? _Were we looking at the same ice tray?"

"It looks like there's a lot more ice from the top but, trust me, it's _all_ filler. Besides, half the stuff that was in there didn't look very good at all."

"Filler ice is still ice." I rolled my eyes. "I agree that some of it didn't look all that great, but there were at least _eight_ good servings."

"_Eight? _Are you crazy? I was being generous with five."

"Yeah, well, what did Esme say?"

"She wasn't sure if the five from last week was better than this one. I say it was because at least last week's tray didn't have filler ice!" It was a testament to how often we played this game that we both perfectly understood each other while the man sipping his coffee a few stools down from us looked confused as to why we were so passionately arguing the amount of ice we had left.

"Hey, I wasn't joking. Filler ice is still ice. Ask Jasper, he'll back me up."

"Ugh, I don't care what Jasper has to say about filler ice."

He laughed and patronizingly cupped my entire jaw, harshly shaking my head from side to side with his freakish strength that he seemingly has no control over. "_Sure_ you don't, cupcake." And then he dropped my chin and continued laughing as he walked away.

I stood there for a second in shocked silence, angrily shaking my head. I would think that he went out of his way to figure out what would piss me off the most, except that he's so oblivious to doing it that it _can't_ be intentional. I stormed back into the kitchen vaguely registering that the man at the counter had his mug raised to his lips for half of our conversation without taking a sip.

Less than an hour later, Jasper came back from his meeting in a good mood and with the book I'd asked him to check out. We said goodbye to Esme first and then to Emmett who reminded me that it was Thursday and we had a date tonight. As if I could forget. Then we walked to the parking structure that I pay entirely too much money to to park there every month where I handed Jasper the keys to my VW Touareg.

As we sat in traffic, I asked him about his meeting and how far he'd gotten in his dissertation. I tried to follow what he was telling me. There were some books and journal articles that his advisor was urging him to read, he was having trouble filling the third section of his dissertation, he was worried that he wasn't supporting his argument enough, but when he started in on the role of Texas in the Confederate Army, I involuntarily tuned him out. Instead, as I sat cross-legged in the passenger seat, I picked at the worn-out hem on my jeans. I loved these jeans. I loved all my jeans, really.

My jean collection was the pride of my closet, but not for the reason you'd think. In my senior year, Forks High School had had a garage sale fund-raiser. I had persuaded Jake to donate his old clothes from junior high, mostly because I figured it would give him more closet space and I had desperately wanted to be able to get into his room without stepping over piles of clothes. Holding up a pair of his old shorts, wondering how he ever got into them, I had tried them on for fun. They'd fit. Not only that, they were _way_ more comfortable than tight girl's pants. After that, I'd persuaded his other friends to clean out their closets, too. Of course, they all thought that I was doing it for charity, I really couldn't care if the sports teams got new uniforms that year. I took all of their donations home and spent a night trying everything on. I found a couple of decent shirts and belts, but mostly, I found jeans. Some I had to roll up and some I made cut-offs out of but, in the end, I had a dozen pair of jeans that were all soft and perfectly broken-in. I appeased my guilty conscience by working from sunrise to sunset at that stupid garage sale and called it even. Eight years later and they're still all I ever wear.

Today I had worn Embry's Levis. He was the tallest and skinniest of the guys growing up, and I gave the hems a few thick rolls before they looked all right. I'd paired it with one of Quil's old leather belts. Quil was the burliest as a kid and had never needed any help keeping his pants up, so his belts were practically new when I got to them. I had topped it all off with a plain black, spaghetti-strapped tank top, not really caring that my black bra straps would show. This was LA in July, after all, and I looked downright matronly. All my bras and matching boy shorts may have been from Victoria's Secret, but they were all plain-colored cotton. My barely-a-handful's probably could've used some padding and push-up, but it just wasn't in me. I didn't understand the allure of it, to be honest. It almost seemed worse than implants, like false advertising. Besides, who did I have to look good for? A plain black flannel shirt that I had stolen from Charlie during Winter Break of my sophomore year of college was tied around my waist. I made sure to always have at least a light sweater on me because the diner could get cold at night. That is, if you thought temperatures in the fifties is cold, which I never thought _I_ would.

When Jasper could tell I was all Civil War'd out, he changed the subject. "Why is it, doll face, that you insist on wear men's pants?"

"Oh," I looked up from my jeans, surprised by the sudden change in conversation. I hoped he hadn't figured out I hadn't been paying attention. "Um...because they're comfortable, I guess. Besides, they're not _men's _pants, they're _boys'_ pants. Big difference."

"Well, where'd you get them, anyway? You don't look like the thrift store type. Are they your brothers?"

And there it was. I wondered if he was as curious about my past as I was about his. I felt like I couldn't give him too much information, though. All he'd need to do is find my books and it would be over, he'd know everything. I'd allowed the rape of my privacy too much over the past few years with horrible consequences. I _needed_ to keep things from him, I _deserved_ it. So, I didn't acknowledge his first question when I spoke, only his second. My voice was soft as I said, "I'm an only child." It was obvious that that was all I was going to say. Both of us knowing that I wasn't going to show him mine if he wasn't going to show me his.

We got to my house in a silence that was not altogether uncomfortable. The side streets leading to my house were peacefully quiet in the late morning and I sighed as we pulled into my driveway. Home. He opened my door for me as I gathered my purse and laptop bag.

"Hey," he said when I hopped out. He put his hands on my hips and softly pushed me back until I was against the side of the car. He bent his head down to bridge the eleven-inch gap in our height and stared into my eyes. Our lips were close and, to anyone on the street, it would have looked like he was asking permission to kiss me. He wasn't, though. He was already going to kiss me and I was already going to let him. No, he was apologizing. That's the thing with Jasper, he never really has to tell you what he's feeling, especially when it's a strong emotion. So, when his eyes bored into me, I _felt_ his sorrow. For bringing up bad memories, for pushing me, and for not being able to confide in me, too. So, _I_ leaned forward and kissed _him_. Accepting his apology and apologizing myself. For _wanting_ to push him even if it meant bringing up bad memories because I _wanted_ him to confide in me, even though I wouldn't do the same.

Our soft kisses eventually continued into the house and then into my bedroom. It couldn't be considered make-up sex because we'd never been angry and because there wasn't enough passion behind it or between us. There never was. Instead, I chose to revel in the physical comfort of connecting with another human being, especially one I loved as much as I loved Jasper. I turned my brain off and just let myself feel. The clean sheets were cool against my back and Jasper's dog tags were heavy against my chest. His hands were lean and strong and he used them to try and make me feel good as I used mine to do the same. And as we worked together to give the other pleasure I marveled at how _nice_ that was of us. We couldn't take the other's pain away, but we sure could give each other a respite.

Later, as my weariness and exultation warred with each other, I traced one of the scars that wrapped around his upper back to the top of his shoulder. Though the last sounds to come out of us had been much louder, the room was silent, so I whispered. "It must have been horrible." There was no pity in my voice and he knew it. "Mine aren't so bad."

He rubbed my leather bracelet and sighed. "I know."

Before I could even be surprised at how much he saw and get pulled down a path I didn't necessarily want to go down, I changed the subject. "Why do you think they're so obsessed with getting us together?" I didn't have to elaborate, he knew that I was talking about Esme and Emmett and everyone else at the diner. I had no life outside of it, so it's not like I knew any other people in LA. I was the only person so pathetic that I had to employ people to have friends.

He thought for a minute. "I don't know, Belle." He rolled onto his side so that he faced me. "I think they're all just as lonely as we are and they think that we could make each other happy but we're missing out on it."

"Does that mean they'd get off our backs if they found someone themselves?"

He shrugged with the shoulder that wasn't digging into the mattress. "Maybe. Or maybe they'd find love and push it on us even more."

I flopped onto my back with a sigh. "Well..." I sighed out, "...maybe it's about time I tried my hand at matchmaking."

He laughed and rolled onto his back, too. "That's what I love about you, doll face. Underneath all of your over-sized flannel shirts and little-boy jeans, there are some parts of you that are so feminine that they counteract it all." As if to prove his point, the back of his hand rubbed my side from the top of my waist to the bottom of my hip, tracing my curve. He chuckled, muttering "matchmaker" under his breath, but didn't stop his movements. The sensation felt nice and I was too tired to have an argument about gender roles with him, so I just sighed, hoping he'd catch the annoyance I'd wanted to convey in the sound, and prepared for sleep. As my eyes begin to close, Jasper mused softly, "You know who'd be great for Emmett, though?"

My eyes shot open. "Don't even say it, Jasper."

"What? You don't even know who I was going to say."

"Yes, I do, and I'm not going to let you introduce them."

He quickly rolled to lean over my body, gaping at me. "They've never _met?_"

I smirked with my eyes closed. "Nope. And they're not going to if I have anything to say about it." Hoping that that was the end of the conversation so that I could sleep.

"How have they never met?" But it looked like he was asking it more to himself. "And why are you keeping them apart?" That one he directed at me.

I opened my eyes and turned my head to face him, perturbed that we were still talking about this. "I only have two other cooks and I'm not going to have Emmett chasing her off because he can't keep it in his pants."

"You think she'd sleep with him?"

"_You're_ the one who thinks they're perfect for each other." He grinned, sheepishly. "Even if she didn't, Emmett doesn't take rejection from women very well. He'd hound her every day until she _had_ to quit."

"Who does Emmett _think_ the lunch cook is?"

I had the decency to look abashed when I said, "A fifty-five year old cougar who spends her mornings down at Muscle Beach in Venice, taking in the show." He fell onto his back laughing boisterously and I giggled next to him. "You know what he actually asked me when I told him that?"

"Huh?"

I put on my best Emmett voice. "'Is she at least hot?'"

He laughed a little more. "Sounds like Emmett."

"Yeah. And if he ever asks, she's fifty pounds overweight and has skin like leather."

We both fell into a fit of cackles after that until I interrupted with a loud yawn. "Go to sleep, Belle." Then _he_ yawned. "I think I might take a nap, too." I wasn't surprised. He usually fell asleep when he came over, whether it was his intent or not. I think the other warm body in the bed helped us both keep our nightmares at bay. Jasper spooned me from behind and yawned, again. I wonder how much sleep he had gotten the night before, considering how early he had shown up at the diner.

I wanted to thank him or something. For his company, for making me laugh, for taking my mind off everything like he always did.... "I had fun today," I whispered, and then simultaneously blushed and grimaced when I realized how that had come across. "I mean—"

He cut me off with a soft chuckle and a squeeze around my middle. "I know what you meant, Belle. I did, too."

I sighed and leaned into his embrace. "'Night, Jasper." And then I giggled because it was slowly approaching midday and the room was bright with sunlight.

"Sweet dreams, doll face."

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	2. E: Diner Dinner Theater

_Author's Note: _Special thanks to **AnnMarieJ **for pointing out some pretty stupid blunders on my part from last chapter. I''ll be sure to clear those up as soon as I post this chapter. I hope I don't disappoint fans of ALB, considering this is a much lighter work. Thanks for reading! Hope you like Edward's point-of-view. I'll try to switch off fairly regularly.

_Stephenie Meyer:_ Thanks for letting us deface your intellectual property.

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**Edward:**  
_Diner Dinner Theater_

At six-thirty in the evening, I was finishing up my first 36-hour shift as one of the newest surgical residents at the UCLA Medical Center. I was beat. I wanted to go home, avoid Alice so that I could sneak in a quick dinner in peace, and go to bed. Unfortunately, a half-hour later, when I got out of the shower in the doctors' locker room, Carlisle had just finished wrapping up his rounds and told me he wanted to take me to meet some of the older surgeons and "show me off." It was an offer that I knew wouldn't be extended to any of the other residents and I would be stupid to pass it up. So, I followed him around, introducing myself while he talked me up. A few eyebrows were raised which helped stroke my ego. I knew my resume was impressive: I had been number one in my undergrad class at Dartmouth _and_ my med school class at Harvard, I had also done a summer with the Peace Corps in Cameroon and two summer clinical rotations during med school at the Mayo Clinic. I looked pretty good on paper.

By eight-thirty, I was ready to go home. Carlisle, again, had other plans. He insisted on taking me out for a celebratory dinner, claiming that our mothers would never forgive him if he didn't. In his defense, he was probably right. I only had an extra pair of scrubs, so I turned down his offer to take me to Ruth's Chris and suggested we do something within walking distance, where my dress wouldn't be so out of the ordinary. I was grateful when he proposed a diner in the area, mostly because diner food was quick and because I knew he'd want to toast if we went anywhere where they served alcohol. In my exhausted condition, I knew I'd fall asleep at the table if I had so much as one beer.

I nearly groaned aloud when he said he'd meet me there, wanting to check in on his patients one last time before calling it a night, though, knowing Carlisle as well as I did, I knew he'd probably check in on them again after dinner. You couldn't deny the man's compassion or fault his dedication. It was only my first day on the job and I had all but ran out of the place when I finished my rounds. I sighed as I walked down the street, knowing I'd probably end up peeking in on some patients before I went home, too. I turned the corner and saw the bookstore at the end of the block, looking across the street, I found the diner exactly where Carlisle said it would be. Forks, Knives, & Spoons. Alice would probably get a kick out of that.

I walked in and stood in the entryway, next to a large, modern jukebox. A tall blond man behind the counter greeted me and told me to sit anywhere. Only five tables were taken and it looked like everyone had already gotten their food. I went for the booth in the corner, sitting facing the wall with my back towards the door, knowing Carlisle would have to walk past the window I was sitting at before he got inside. I picked up a menu from the end of the table and looked it over quickly. Typical diner grub. I decided to treat myself to the extra calories of a cheeseburger, fries, and onion rings.

The same blond man came to take my order, but I only asked for a water, explaining to him that I was waiting for someone. I had put my messenger bag on the bench next to me and I opened it up, preparing to do some reading for the conference I had tomorrow, but knew that I wouldn't remember a thing I tried to memorize right now. Instead, I pulled out a book that Alice had been nagging at me to read for months. She had taken the dust jacket off of it before she gave it to me, telling me that I wouldn't read it if I read the synopsis. If that wasn't the biggest clue that I wouldn't like it, I don't know what was. The night before my first day on the job, however, I hadn't been able to go to sleep and needed to do something that would take my mind off of the busy day I was just now ending. So, I had picked up the book without a cover and dove in. As far as I could tell, it was a love story. The writing wasn't spectacular, whoever this Marie Higginbotham was wasn't going to be winning a Pulitzer anytime soon, but it was entertaining and better than most things on TV nowadays.

I had gotten through another chapter when my water was brought to the table. I didn't look up as I thanked the man, so I was surprised when I heard a woman's voice. "Good book?" she sounded amused and I figured she'd recognized the book I was reading.

Cursing my sister's very existence for making me look like the kind of guy who enjoys romance novels, I slammed the book shut and tried to play it cool as I saw Carlisle walking across the street. "It's great at putting me to sleep," I said with a smirk before tilting my head up at her. Instead of laughing at my joke, she hmph'd and spun on her heel. Before I could see her face, she was storming off, her long, brown hair swaying against her too-large, men's flannel shirt. That was weird. Usually girls at least _pretended_ to laugh at my jokes. She must have _really_ liked the book.

I put the book away as Carlisle sat down and picked up the menu. "How were your patients?"

"Good," he said, nodding. "I was waiting on the results of an ESWL."

"Nice," I said, drinking some water. He shook his head at me with a smile. There were side effects of being a doctor that no one ever really explains to you in med school. Like the fact that you could casually talk about waiting for a patient to piss out their kidney stones. Nothing phases doctors. It can't. "Get them all?"

"The sonogram looked good, but we'll know more when the X-rays come back. I think I'm going to get breakfast..." He trailed off as he continued to survey the menu.

I had just picked up my water when the door to the diner flew open and I turned in my seat as the largest man I have ever seen came through it. He was wearing a UCLA football shirt with cargo shorts and if he hadn't looked older than me, I wouldn't have doubted for a moment that he was one of their linemen. He set down a plastic bag on the counter as he went behind it, slapping the blond man on his back. "What's up, Jazz?"

"Hey, Em." The blond man, _Jazz_, I guess, was surprised and turned to glance up at the clock. "You're here early."

"Just excited about my date tonight with our girl." He walked to the kitchen doors and stuck his head in. "Hey, Bellsie. Ready for our date?" He opened the doors more and I saw a pair of arms wrap around his waist.

"Hey, Emmett." I could tell by her voice that this was the same girl who had given me my water earlier. "What do you have planned for us this time?" She didn't sound too enthusiastic and the guys laughed at her tone. I tried not to think about it too much, nothing this girl did made much sense.

"I think I'm getting some hard-boiled eggs and toast." Carlisle put down his menu across from me and noticed the direction of my stare before I turned around to face him. "I've been meaning to come in here for a while. Kate Martin works here."

"As in Dr. Martin's daughter?" Carlisle nodded. I was surprised. Dr. Martin and his wife were _loaded._ That's saying something coming from someone who grew up in the world Carlisle and I did. "Why does she work here?"

Carlisle shrugged. "She graduated two years ago with a degree in Russian Studies and she has no clue what to do with it. I think she just wants to gain some independence by earning her own money. It's not like Carmen and Eleazar wouldn't give her an open-ended bank account." He continued looking around the diner until his eyes found mine again. A smile slowly filled his face. "So, Doctor...how was your first day?"

I let out a deep breath that sounded more like a sigh. "Long."

He laughed. "And med school didn't prepare you for sleep deprivation?"

"Not enough, I guess."

He chuckled, again. "Well, I'm sorry I couldn't get you a better dinner. I'll take you out the next time you get a break."

I laughed, mirthlessly. "You mean in five years?"

"Oh, come on, Edward. The hospital couldn't have broken your spirit_ already_."

"No," I sighed out the word. "I'm just tired."

"Well, if we can't toast with champagne, how about we buy celebratory milkshakes."

I managed a smile for his sake. He was proud of me and I should be basking in it, not ruining the mood. "You're on."

The blond came up to our table then, introducing himself as Jasper, and took our order. I wasn't too sure how you got Jazz from Jasper, but whatever. Carlisle raised his eyebrows at my order. "We just got through talking about kidney stones and you order onion rings _and _fries?"

I would've said something smart to him, if our attention hadn't been diverted to the big guy screaming through the open kitchen door. "Burn one, wax it, and make it cry with frog sticks and fried breath in the alley. Whiskey down with..." He stopped to carefully read the paper Jasper had taken our order on and then he laughed. "...with a crowd of berries and drown the kids!"

"'Kay, Em," A small voice responded from the kitchen.

Carlisle and I slowly turned away from the scene and looked at each other. Disbelief painted both of our smirking faces. When we heard the large man pleading with the blond to let him make our milkshakes, we tried to laugh quietly. "This place is weird, Carlisle."

"Agreed."

We spoke for a while about my day and the surgeries I had sat in on. I bemoaned the invention of paperwork and he laughed. We sipped at our milkshakes when Jasper brought them and then, not more than five minutes later, our food came out.

Most of the tables that were full when I had come in had emptied, and not many people had taken their place. A group of female undergrads took the table behind us and I could tell by the way Carlisle kept his head down on his plate that they kept stealing glances at him. I felt bad for the guy, but was glad that I wasn't the one facing them. It was bad enough that I could practically _hear_ their lewd thoughts towards my friend.

Carlisle Cullen and I had grown up in the same social circle within Chicago. He was born in London to a British father and an American mother who died during childbirth. His father, a pastor who had no idea how to raise a child on his own, sent him to live with his aunt in Chicago. His aunt had married into money but was made a widow in her late twenties, not long after taking Carlisle in, when his uncle was in a car accident. Knowing her since birth, he considers her to be his mother. He visited his father once a year in London and he lived with him for a nearly a year after high school before abruptly coming home. As far as I know, they haven't spoken since.

When my father, Edward Masen, Sr., had married my mother, Elizabeth, the two women befriended each other, being two of the only wives who had not come from money themselves and were not young enough to be their husband's daughters. He was seven when I was born and has been a constant presence in my life ever since. As children, we had been too far apart in age to really be considered close. By the time I had actively been seeking a brotherly relationship with him, he was finishing up high school. He'd always made time for me, though, and it was his example I always tried to follow. While messing around with others my age at the parties and banquets that no little kid should ever have to endure, I'd always kept one eye on Carlisle to see how he was acting. Most adults, my parents included, used to tease me for being serious and adult-like once I hit adolescence. Only Alice had known that I was mimicking Carlisle's mild-mannered and demure public persona.

Like all fraternal relationships, there had been a time when I resented him. He seemed to me to be everything I was not. I have a temper that I try hard to control, Carlisle could never hurt a fly. His compassion knows no bounds, whereas I have been characterized as misanthropic on more than one occasion. He's always amiable and pleasant, I'm sullen and moody. Choosing to grow up in Carlisle's shadow, I had been bound to fail.

The resentment grew when Carlisle went off to London and then to Harvard, and I'd felt alone in our world for the first time. I grew cynical and jaded. Everyone I knew had money and liked to show everyone else just how much money they had. Everything trivial became a competition between the adults in my world and my peers, who would one day grow up to take their place. While my perfect grades and piano-playing skills, the accomplishments I was proud of, had been shunned by my classmates, the new body the swim and track team afforded me had garnered me more attention than I could imagine. I became even more disillusioned and dove into my teenage rebellion whole-heartedly.

If there was anything Carlisle and I had in common, it was our good looks, but even those are a study in opposites. Carlisle and I are tall, both six-two, and have the same slim build. The similarities end there. He has light blond hair and mine is a dark auburn. His blue eyes are dark, clear sapphires, whereas my green eyes are light, opaque glass. His face is chiseled and manly, mine is angular but still boy-like. His movie-star smile is full and straight, whereas I can only ever muster up a half of a crooked one.

By the middle of junior year, I had decided that if the vapid girls at my school were offering up their bodies to me to rise up in their petty class system, then I would be willing to accept. I'd left the few nice girls alone, focusing on the ones who threw themselves at me. I discovered an even seedier side to the world I lived in, one in which everyone was screwing everyone without affection or commitment, but not entirely without agenda. Girls rattled off the names of the guys that had had them the way young boys bragged about baseball cards and I soon found that in my quest to stay out of the game, I was the rookie card every girl wanted to have. I used it to my advantage.

I began the game cautiously, making weekly trips to the cafeteria instead of hiding at my usual spot deep within the stacks of the school's library. On these days, girls that had usually sat huddled together left a chair open beside them, hoping I'd fill it. I became some sort of deprived benefactor, handing out the most valued currency in this horrible excuse for sexual Monopoly. In my deranged computations, sitting at the girls' table was like throwing them all some change while handing a nice, crisp bill to the two girls I sat between. Those girls were usually mid-level players, and I had inflated their status without allowing them to enter the arena where the real game was taking place. I'd throw winks and smiles, petty change really, at the low-level players, allowing them to save face, while ignoring the main ones.

I had always been very aware of the thoughts of those around me, so much so that I could tell the role each girl played within the game. There were some who had been dragged into it only because their friends were doing it. These girls I considered the weakest players, yet my brethren in a way. We were in the game to get what we needed out of it. I got sex, they got status. Fair trade. Then there were the girls who were in it to win. These girls were the strongest players, using sex to assume the upper-hand over the male players. With these girls, I went out of my way to show them that _I_ was in fact running the show. Like chess, I had played the game with strategy, knowing my next ten steps and predicting the next ten from everyone else.

At sixteen, I gave my first kiss to a mid-level Senior by her locker before lunch. I had chosen her for three reasons: she was the prettiest girl in school but hadn't given up her virginity until she was a junior, losing out on two years where she could have been making a name for herself, which I respected in a way; she had been Alice's lab partner in chemistry the year before and had been nice to her and my mother the one time she had come over to work on a project; and, her locker was in front of the cafeteria, ensuring everyone had seen our make-out session. It was a very calculated choice. I had made lists. By the end of the year, I had gotten to first-base with four girls and second-base with three of those four. All of them had been chosen because they had their own cars and most were surprised when I suggested we go to dinner or a movie first and that I stopped myself when I did. I'd like to say that I did it because my mother had raised me to be a gentleman, which she had, but, in truth, it was all part of the plan.

Three days after school let out for the summer, I turned sixteen. By the end of the week, I had my driver's license and a car. It was time for stage two. My parents had been surprised when I asked for an SUV, considering I had no friends to fill the seats with, but relented, like I knew they would. They still had had no idea of my involvement in the game, as was my intent. After all, in the past six months, I had only gone out with four girls, another calculated effort. My father had thought his late-bloomer of a son was finally looking at girls the way he ought to. He had no idea. So, it never once had crossed their minds that I would be using all that extra back-seat space as a portable bed.

My first hand-job was on a late Tuesday morning two weeks into summer in a lounge chair by my pool. I had invited a just-graduated, low-level senior over for a dip while my mom was at her weekly Women's Club meeting. My second was three hours later in a high-level, now-sophomore girl's drive-way after taking her to lunch where no one would see us. My third was at a drive-in movie theater in the suburbs that night with a mid-level girl in my class. Each hadn't seemed surprised that I chose not to reciprocate and each had had shit-eating grins on their faces when it was over. I had counted on the difference in ages of the girls and the summer's distance to slow the spread of the news. By the time the stories reached the other girls through an elaborate game of teenage telephone, each was convinced that they'd gotten to me first and that the other girls had been lying. No one believed I had been with three girls in the same day, especially when I was so new to the game. As soon as the suspicion of lying had been introduced, the stories grew until they were each claiming to have given me blow jobs. The other four girls I had been with earlier in the year, not wanting to be left out, began embellishing the details about those dates, too. I had successfully, and on my first attempt, pitted three girls against each other and given myself the credibility of having more experience than I actually had.

I had spent the first half of the summer carefully monitoring the stories going on about me through other girls, only clarifying stories that put girls at a higher ranking than I was comfortable allowing them to have. These public retractions only gave credence to those I seemingly didn't correct. Instead, I handled_ all_ false accounts personally, so that no girl thought I was happy with their fabrications, even when I was willfully allowing the rest of the population to believe they were true for my benefit.

I became an expert at these kinds of conversations: "Look, (fill in the girl's name), I've been hearing rumors about us." Here she would adamantly deny having heard or spread them, to which I would sigh over the phone, loudly. If I really hadn't minded the rumor, I might tell her something like, "I know it probably wasn't you who started it, all I'm saying is that I would hate for this to have an affect on our friendship." Which she and I both knew was code for, "I might tell everyone I'm taking you out of my rotation." And then she would plead to allow her to make it up to me and nine times out of ten, I would get the blow job that she had claimed to have given me in the first place.

Girls who had alleged that I had reciprocated, an honor I had not yet performed and had not yet wanted to dole out, or girls who were major players and wanted to claim me, got a very different Edward Masen when they answered the phone. Those conversations had usually started with a sigh on my end and an uncomfortable silence on hers. I would then give specifics: "Look, (fill in the girl's name), I heard from (fill in name of random girl) that you were saying that we (fill in appropriate sex act). Now, you and I both know that (that didn't happen/I didn't touch you). I don't know where you get off..." Then there was groveling on the other end or fake, self-righteous indignation. And, eight times out of ten, I had gotten a blow job knowing that, if she told anyone about it, their credibility was already shot.

It had been the middle of that summer when phase three went into effect. As one of Alice's many graduation gifts, my parents had paid for a two-month trip around Europe. The caveat was, she had to take me. My sister and I had never had the closest relationship because our personalities were extreme opposites. She's loud and I'm reserved; she's affectionate and I don't do hugs; she's cheerful and I'm moody; she's adventurous and I'm cautious. Yet, we always manage to get along and have fun when we're together. My parents had trusted me to take care of her under five-foot, petite self and to keep her from doing anything too thoughtlessly reckless. In a way, I think she'd been happy to be taking me along instead of her girlfriends. She had known I would actually enjoy the sights with her and would still appease her by carrying her bags around the shopping districts, which I had. _I_ had used the trip as the perfect opportunity to lose my virginity. What better place to fix all of the kinks in my form and to perfect my technique than with willing strangers I would never see again? I had been purposefully waiting not to reciprocate with the girls at school until I trusted myself to perform well.

Two months and nine girls later, one girl in each country we visited, I had returned for my senior year of high school, ready for phase four, the end game. I'll be the first to admit, I might have taken it too far in the end. It was hubris that led to my downfall. I had gotten it in my head that by playing the younger classes, I could control who would be a major player in game for the next few years. Like I said, pure hubris. The sick thing is, I didn't even _care_, really. I had just become addicted to the manipulation and was sick that generations of girls were growing up to fill the shoes of the girls I had tried to keep down for a year and a half.

I thought I had everything under control, but I ignored a crucial element that I shouldn't have. Playing the game had not made me any new friends. In fact, while I was considered to be the most popular guy in school, the only people I ever spoke to were the girls I was playing and the girls I had already played. So, it shouldn't have surprised me that my demise came in the form of the other male players in the school. I had stepped on one too many toes without even realizing it and, by the beginning of spring, had gotten into three fights with guys I hadn't even known existed.

My parents had begun to have some idea of what I had become involved in and, needless to say, were horribly disappointed. For the first time in a few years, Carlisle came home that spring break. Looking back now, it's obvious that my father asked him to come talk to me. I'd expected the same lecture I had been getting from every other adult for the past month. I should have thought better of him. Instead of being angry, Carlisle in his infinite patience asked me why I did it. Not what or how or even whom, but _why_. It was a relief to tell my side of the story for once. I hadn't been a malicious predator, hunting the weak and defenseless, I had used and been used in kind. My only vindictiveness had been aimed at those who were themselves exploiters. Carlisle had listened to it all in quiet acceptance.

When I had finished, he had seized upon the underlying problem immediately: I hated this world and, upset at being trapped in it, I had used my baser instincts to enact the only form of retaliation I had at my disposal. He had made me acknowledge that I had been playing god and enjoyed it, which I had and I did. Then he had said, only half jokingly, that it was a good thing I was going into med school. We had talked for a while longer, not necessarily about what had happened, just about life and the way we had grown up. I began to feel a new level of respect for Carlisle. Like me, he had only _looked_ popular. The difference was, he had kept his dignity by abstaining from the game altogether.

When he couldn't hold his curiosity in any longer, he had asked me how I had done it. By the end of my five-phase story, his eyes had been wide and his jaw had been on the floor. "You know, you're entirely too smart for your own good." I had shrugged, but I had also smirked. That summer, after graduation, I'd gone to stay with him in Boston. We'd been best friends ever since.

After sneaking a glance behind my shoulder, Carlisle went back to intently eating his eggs. Poor guy. Over the years he had confessed to me that he had never actually been with a woman. He was waiting. I don't know who had it worse off. I had wholly given into my desires back in high school but had gone eight years without, whereas Carlisle had never known it. We were both masochists, but I guess we both had our reasons.

I heard someone approach the girls' table. "Hi, I'm Bella. Welcome to Forks!" It was the waitress, again. Or was she the cook? "What can I start you guys off with today?" Each girl gave her her drink orders and then Bella said, cheerfully. "Great! I'll be right back."

One girl didn't let her leave right away, though. "That's such a cool bracelet! Where'd you get it?" I wanted to roll my eyes at the girl's saccharin-laced venom.

"Oh...um...," she sounded nervous and I wondered if she was uncomfortable. "It was a, um, a gift actually." She cleared her throat. "Let me go get those drinks for you." I could hear her footsteps as she scurried away.

When she was out of earshot, the girls started in on her. "She _should_ be embarrassed, did you see that? Who would get a piece of leather, tie it around somebody's wrist a couple of times and call it a present?"

"Some cheap-ass guy who thinks that counts as jewelry." Snorts of laughter rang out around the table.

"Can you imagine if someone gave that girl _real_ jewelry, though? What goes with plaid flannel?" A few of the girls giggled. "It would be a better investment to just buy her some saline." They all cackled over that one.

Across the table from me, Carlisle kept his eyes on his plate as he sighed and shook his head in frustration. I gripped my milkshake tightly in my fist. Fucking bitches. That's why I can never really get myself to regret what I did to all those girls in high school. They deserved it.

I turned my head slightly to watch the girl behind the counter. I felt a surge of pity for her and I wanted to protect her. Probably because she was so obviously ill-equipped to stick up for herself.

She started to turn around from the soda fountain and I quickly turned back to Carlisle. "How's your dinner, _grandpa?_" I emphasized the last word sarcastically. Who orders rye toast and hard-boiled eggs at a restaurant?

"How's your heart attack?" He countered.

I laughed good-naturedly. "Remember that dive bar in Cambridge that had that really bad pub food?" During my years in Dartmouth when he was still in med school and later when I was in med school and he was doing his residency at Beth Israel, we made it a point to catch up with each other a few times a month. More often than not, once I turned 21, it took place over a pint of beer.

Carlisle grimaced at the memory. "I've _never_ had such soggy fish and chips in my life."

"_Neh-vah?_" I threw on an Cockney accent, mocking his British roots. He rolled his eyes.

"Here you go, ladies!" Bella was back, sounding just as pleasant as she had when she first took their order. Huh. She's got that passive-aggressive thing down pat. "Now, what can I get for you?" She was polite as she took their orders, making sure of their preferences before repeating the entire table's order and ending with a, "No problem! That should be out in just a bit." Weird. She really _didn't_ seem upset. How did she not know those girls were being underhanded with her? Again that urge to protect her rushed though me. She really has no sense of self-preservation.

I watched her as she made her way back behind the kitchen doors with the large, round drink tray tucked under her arm. The blond man had disappeared, though the book I had seen him reading earlier was still open on the counter. The large man was loading ice into the top of the soda fountain.

Carlisle and I continued to talk as we finished up our food. I got up to use the restrooms, which were back by the front door, when I heard Bella call out from the kitchen, "Guys...order up!" Both of the men practically jumped up and ran. I laughed to myself. She obviously had them wrapped around her finger.

I was coming out of the bathroom when I heard her talking on the other side of the half-wall, behind the counter. "Seriously, like movie-star good-looking." I stopped to listen...well, to eavesdrop, really.

"Hey!" An outraged, deep voice called out. "What about us?"

"Pssh," she snorted, obviously not above hurting either one of their feelings. "Sorry, Em, but pretty doctor guy bumped you down on the tall, dark, and handsome list. And, Jasper, all I can tell you is that you were, hands down, the best looking blond man I have ever seen...until _that guy_ walked in here an hour ago.

"Whatever, Bella." The larger waiter, from the sound of it, made a big show of stomping away and she giggled.

"They're too handsome for the rest of us mere mortals, but they're perfect for them, aren't they, Jasper?"

"You were _serious_ about that, Belle?"

"Of course I was. I told you I was. It's a good plan."

"I don't know, doll face. I get the feeling that this is all going to blow up in your face. You should just leave well-enough alone."

He sounded persuasive enough and there was a pause while she thought over what he had said. "I think I'll go give them their check."

He sighed as he chuckled softly and muttered, "Stubborn girl."

Their conversation was over, so I turned the corner and headed back to Carlisle, still mulling over what I had heard. It's clear that there's something definitely off about that girl. She just didn't react right to situations. She didn't try to get on my good side by laughing at my joke which, while refreshing, I have to admit it made me take a hit to my ego. Then, she seemed to be offended by how the girls were talking to her, but a minute later, she was cheerful as hell. And I don't think that was an act. Now, she admits to finding Carlisle and I attractive, but completely dismisses herself as being out of our league. Since when has that ever stopped a girl before? Not only that, but it sounds like she wants to set us up with her friends. Maybe that big guy really is her boyfriend. He didn't seem too upset that she was checking us out, though.

As I walked by the table of co-eds, their eyes roamed my body. I sat down in the booth and I heard them giggle. At least that was a_ normal _response.

"You okay, Edward?"

"Uh huh."

I heard footsteps coming towards our table and I knew from the conversation I had overheard that it would be her. "Can I get you guys anything else?" For the first time, I glanced up at her face.

"No, thank you." Carlisle answered, amicably.

Thank god _he_ did, because there was no way in hell _I_ couldn't speak at the moment. I was too busy staring at the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Which was momentarily shocking to me because, objectively, I could tell that there was nothing exceptional about this girl. She had long, straight, dark brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. No big deal, right? Except that her hair seemed incredibly soft and shiny and her eyes showed depth and were richly colored. She wasn't tall, but her petite frame made her appear shorter and smaller than she probably was. Her shape wasn't defined in the over-sized jeans and long-sleeve shirt she had on, but the tank top she wore underneath hinted at a narrow waist and small curves. Everything, from her heart-shaped face to her bitten-down fingernails was drawing me to her. I wanted to laugh out loud because, after years of self-induced celibacy, the girl who was tempting me like Aphrodite herself was _this girl?_ Except that I wasn't laughing, because I wasn't amused. I was _pissed_.

She turned to me with a small smile that was gone when she saw my face. "So, uh..." Though her speech faltered, she didn't break eye contact with me. "Here's your check." She set the tented piece of paper down on the counter and, sending a questioning glance in my direction, made her way back to the waiters at the counter.

The blond looked up at her and smirked while he asked her something, softly. She just shrugged her shoulders and waved an arm dismissively in the air. "C'mon, Em. It's date night. What've you got planned?"

Carlisle was leaning in his seat to grab his wallet and I half-heartedly thanked him for dinner before slyly turning my attention back to the maddening curiosity that was my personal femme fatale wrapped in this woman-child's body.

The man she called "Em" held up a book with a "Ta da!"

She took it from him. "Scoubidou?" She had a confused look on her face as she looked up at him. "Huh? Like the dog?" She didn't wait for him to respond, though, she started flipping through the first few pages of the book before she cleared her throat and read, "Scoubidou originated in France in the 1950's...."

He came up behind her and rested his chin on her shoulder, reading over her shoulder. It looked a little too cozy and I had to remind myself that she had told him earlier that I'm more attractive than he is. Doesn't matter, I guess. It figures that the one girl I would be into in eight years has a behemoth of a boyfriend. That just infuriated me more, though. Why should I care if this girl thinks I'm attractive or not? Why should I care if she's seeing someone else? Even if they're not dating, she obviously has enough suitors as it is and I am_ not_ interested, even if my dick is.

"Named after the cartoon...." She kept scanning the page, reading to herself until she seemed to catch the gist of it and shut the book. "Lanyards, Em? We're making _lanyards?_"

He took the book back from her. "Oh, c'mon, you know it'll be fun. I bought tons of boondoggle." They both stared at him, incredulously. "What? That's what it's called." He started flipping through the pages, ignoring the fact that their faces hadn't changed. "Ooh look, they named one after Lil' Em, king cobra." He nudged her with his elbow, wagging his eyebrows suggestively.

She laughed. That's it, I needed to get out of there. "Let me go get scissors." And then she disappeared into the back.

Carlisle was oblivious as he scooped the last of his milkshake out of the mixing cup with a long, iced tea spoon. "Ready to go?" I asked. I had a small window of opportunity to leave before she came back out. For some reason I didn't think I had it in me to leave if I could see her.

As Carlisle went up to the counter to pay, I heard outside noise drift in through the open door and turned towards the entrance. A tall, muscular Native-American man walked in and went straight up to the large waiter, who was unrolling different colored strands of plastic from their spools. He put his motorcycle helmet down on the counter and an old, worn, black duffel bag across two of the built-in stools. He cleared his throat, causing the waiter to look up. "Excuse me, is Bella Swan here?"

_Je_sus _Christ!_ Who is_ this _guy now? The waiter seemed to have somewhat of the same response I had had to the question because he straightened his posture and looked down at the man. "Who wants to know?"

The man grinned arrogantly, obviously not intimidated. Nor should he be. Though the stranger was shorter by an inch or two, both men's obvious muscle mass, which they were only trying to highlight by crossing their arms tightly, were nearly identical in size. "Relax, man. I'm an old friend. I take it that means she's here?" Carlisle and the blond waiter who was helping him with the bill, and the rest of the patrons, apparently, had all taken an interest in this new development. The entire diner had gone quiet. This place should bill itself as dinner theater.

The two waiters shared a look and when the blond one shrugged, the large one went into the kitchen. We could all hear him as he yelled, "Hey, Bellsie?"

She answered at the same volume with a, "Yeah?"

"So, this big Indian guy walked into the diner and—"

"That's not funny, Emmett!" She snapped back at him. "In fact, that's really racist and I'm not in the mood."

I noticed that a few of us were sporting matching smirks. She thought he was telling a joke! This girl was too much.

Emmett, which I guess Em is short for, huffed in frustration. "Fine. This big _Native-American_ guy walked into—"

"Please, Emmett," she cut him off. She wasn't screaming anymore, so they must have been in the same room. "I don't want to hear a racist joke right now, okay? Look, I found scissors in the office."

"Joke? I'm not kidding, boss. An In—I mean, a Native-American guy just walked into the diner and he's asking for you. Cocky son of a bitch, too," he chuckled once and then stopped. "_Bella?" _There was a pause before,_ "Jazz?_" His voice sounded panicked. "Get in here! She passed out or something!"

Before I knew what I was doing, I was out of my seat and running towards the kitchen.

The tall, dark stranger followed after me, chuckling.

* * *

_Bad-boy Edward Recommendations:_

_/s/5180793/1/_**Emancipation**_**Proclamation**: Mob-prince who manages to maintain his edge even after changing his ways for our fair Bella. Plus, he speaks Italian.  
/s/5143291/1/**Clipped**_**Wings**_**and**_**Inked**_**Armor**: Tatted and pierced, he can't rein in his cussing, but still calls Bella's vagina her "kitty."  
/s/5007065/1/**Bad**_**Habit**: He's been keeping Bella on the sly since high school. Flashback fic as the gang heads back home to the Cullens' house in Forks for a long weekend.  
/s/5100876/1/**The**_**Blessing**_**and**_**the**_**Curse**: All-Human, but he still has his telepathy, which he's been using against Bella since childhood.

Most are pretty well-known, but hopefully you'll find something new.


	3. B: News from Home

_Author's Note:_ So, I screwed up. In the last chapter I dressed Edward up in a pair of scrubs, but when I went on to a UCLA Medical Center website, I learned that doctor's there are only allowed to wear scrubs during surgery and never outside the hospital. Oops. For consistency, he's still wearing them in this one, but I'll try to keep it in mind from now on.

_Stephenie Meyer:_ Of course _you_ came up with all the characters, _I'm_ the uncreative one who can't even think of something clever for this disclaimer line.

**

* * *

Bella:**_  
News from Home_

Sound came back to me first. There was only darkness, but there were voices.

"Look, _cocksucker_, I don't know who the _fuck_ you think you are, but if you tell me to relax _one more time_ because 'she _always_ passes out,' I will take you outside and _beat your ass!_" Emmett.

That made me want to laugh, but I couldn't. Touch came next. I was laying suspended in air, swaying slightly, but no one was carrying me. Someone's warm, clammy fingers were pressed under the jawline on my neck.

"Calm down, Em! She'll come around." Jasper.

I felt my head being lifted and when the fingers hit a sore spot, I wanted to wince, but I still couldn't move. It was like I was stuck in a dream, a _weird_ dream. C'mon, Bella, wake up!

"And _how the fuck_ are _you_ so calm right now, Jazz? That's _our girl_ lying there!"

"What do you guys like share her? Like some sort of polygamy thing?" I heard a soft noise near me, almost like a growl mixed with a groan. But I couldn't dwell on that now, because that last voice, the one that sounded amused, had reminded me of someone. Who _is _that? _Think,_ Bella.

"I fucking _swear_, asshole, you do _not_ want to test me right now!"

Then I remembered.... "Seth?" My eyes popped open, but instead of seeing Seth's dark brown eyes, I was staring into the palest green eyes I had ever seen. "Pretty," I breathed, softly, and the owner of the eyes smiled before he reset his face to indifference so quickly I didn't even have time to blush.

Emmett fell to his knees by my head and our heads were the same height. I must have been on his hammock in the storage room. I felt his hands brush the sides of my face, effectively tearing my gaze away from the doctor in scrubs who had been hot and cold with me since the minute he had sat in his booth and unknowingly insulted my book. "_Fuck, _Bella! You scared the _shit_ out of me! I tried to catch you but you were already—"

"Don't worry about it, Em." I reached to squeeze one of his hands in reassurance. I really was fine, I just stopped breathing. Like an idiot. "Would you do me a favor and go handle the dining room right now?"

"I'll go," Jasper volunteered. I guess that was for the best, Emmett was in no state to deal with people, especially considering he probably didn't believe I was 100%, yet.

"Thanks, Jasper."

"Nothing to it, doll face." He made his way out of the room but gripped the door frame before turning back. "You sure you're okay?"

I gave him a small smile. "Yeah."

He took a few steps back into the room and Emmett moved from his spot at my side to let Jasper kiss me on the forehead and whisper, "Good." Then, nodding to Emmett, who crowded next to me again, this time on his feet, he left the room. I turned away from Em's now eye-level crotch and met the doctor's cool eyes, again. His stare was attentive and its intensity was starting to make me uneasy. I squirmed, involuntarily. He thought that I was trying to sit up and gently cupped my shoulders. The heat from his hands soaked through my flannel shirt.

"Don't move. We should probably get you to the hospital to see if you have a concussion. You have a fairly large lump on the back of your head."

I tried to shake my head but it just ended up sliding around on my hair, which was trapped between my skull and the hammock's crocheted hemp. The jerky movement caused my entire body to swing. Closer to his eyes, farther from his eyes, until he wrapped his fingers in the weave to stop the momentum. I must have looked ridiculous, so I tried my best to sound assertive as I stressed, "No. No hospitals."

The doctor shook his head and narrowed his eyes in frustration. "Carlisle, do you have your penlight?" I looked to the right side of the room, behind the doctor, for the first time. Carlisle must have been the name of the beautiful blond that I wanted to set up with Esme. He handed the still unnamed doctor a slim, black cylinder and I wondered if they were both doctors. Behind Carlisle, deeper in the room, was Seth. He winked at me when he caught my eye and I smiled back before the light shining in my eye caused me to wince. "Just follow the light, Bella."

So I did. Side to side, up and down. Other eye. Side to side, up and down. Easy. "Can I get up now?"

He didn't answer, he just put a warm hand under my back and helped me to sit up cross-legged, while Emmett pushed a few of his pillows behind my back to keep me upright. "Are you dizzy? Nauseas?" I shook my head. "Do you have a headache?"

I took the opportunity to stare into his face while he asked me questions. "Not really, it just feels sore in the back."

He nodded in understanding. "Do you know what today is?" It's only polite to maintain eye contact, right? He sure is pretty.

"Thursday the 2nd."

"Do you remember what happened before you collapsed?"

I nodded but didn't elaborate and he stared at me, expectantly. Shit. "Well...Emmett came in here to tell me that someone had come in looking for me." Before he could ask me for more specifics and I had to explain that the thought of seeing my ex had caused my brain to shut down in pure panic, I looked up at Seth, who was still standing on the outskirts. "Hey, Seth."

He smiled his familiar smile and it made my heart hurt. "Hey, Bells." Then he smugly looked over at Emmett.

"She seems fine, Carlisle," the doctor said, still looking at me. He let out a sigh and didn't shift the direction of his body as he handed the flashlight over his shoulder to the blond man.

"She does," he agreed, before turning to speak to me, directly. "Just make sure you get to the hospital if you start to feel nauseas, have vision problems, trouble concentrating, lack of motor coordination..."

The guys laughed at that and I blushed. "She's clumsy," Seth explained to Carlisle and the doctor while smiling down at me. The doctor, who had been kneeling beside me the whole time, finally stood and offered me his hand. But Emmett, a step ahead of him, was already dipping the hammock towards himself and helping me onto my feet.

As soon as I was upright, I crossed the room to Seth, who promptly picked me up and crushed me to him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and, crossing my ankles, tucked my feet behind me, just like I always used to do when one of the guys picked me up to hug me. Jake used to hate it because he said it looked romantic. He got over it when I had pointed out that he was the only guy I ever _wrapped_ my legs around. "I missed you, Seth."

"I missed you, too, Honeybells." I giggled at the old nickname. "Sorry I freaked you out." I just nodded into his neck. He finally set me down again and we beamed at each other.

"We should..." Carlisle pointed to the door. I had forgotten everyone was still there. Emmett was still regarding Seth warily. The doctor looked pissed. Ah, another mood swing.

"Oh, of course." I grabbed Seth's hand and led the way out to the dining room.

He tugged on one of my jean's belt loops as we walked through the kitchen. "Embry's?"

I smiled up at him, surprised. "How'd you know?"

He shrugged. "You always had to cuff his the most."

I pushed the kitchen doors open and was glad to see that no new parties had come in while I had been making a scene in the back. There were still two groups on the left side of the room but the table of girls had left. I tried not to look at the customers, knowing that I had completely embarrassed myself in front of them. "Thank you for everything," I told the doctor.

"It was nothing," he said curtly over his shoulder as he went to pick up his bag from the booth they had been sitting in.

"I never got a chance to finish paying our tab," Carlisle said, looking towards the cash register at the end of the counter.

"Please. It's on me. I insist. In fact..." I grabbed two pieces of paper of the ordering pad and wrote:

_Esme, Rose, Kate, & Garrett—_

_This is one of the two men who was nice enough to help me when I passed out in the kitchen. Give them whatever they'd like, on the house._

—_Bella_

I handed one to Carlisle who read it quickly and thanked me. "Thank you for not billing my insurance." He chuckled. "You should come by for breakfast, next time." _And meet Esme_, I added in my head. The other doctor was standing next to Carlisle by then and I handed him his note. "Or lunch. The day cooks are much better than I am." He nodded and stuffed the note into his bag without looking at it before turning to Carlisle and asking him if he was ready to go. After a few quick goodbyes, they were walking out of the diner.

I turned all my attention to Seth, who had been leaning up against the counter watching me the whole time. "What do you say we try those introductions again?" He grinned.

Without having to look, I knew Jasper and Emmett were behind me. "Seth Clearwater..." I spun around. "...Jasper Whitlock and Emmett McCarty. Jasper and Emmett, this is Seth, my friend from back home." After some manly, death-grip handshakes, Emmett went off to the jukebox and Jasper sat down again in front of his work. "You're sticking around for a bit, right, Jasper?"

"Sure thing, doll face. I'm fairly well-rested from this afternoon," he added with a wink.

I smirked and turned on my heel so that Seth wouldn't see the blush on my face. "C'mon, Seth." He followed me into the kitchen and sat down on one of the stools around the large island. "So, what am I making for you?"

"Fish fry."

I laughed at the speed of his answer. "Sorry, forgot to go fishing this morning. How does breakfast sound?"

"Mmm. Bella's Special Breakfast! Did you put it on the menu?"

"Are you kidding? The only person I know other than one of you boys who can finish it is Emmett."

The summer before my senior year of high school, my father got it in his head that after a decade of disuse, he was going to clean out the garage. I have my suspicions, though, that he only decided this when he saw the untapped potential of my new boyfriend and his two best friends. So, one cloudy but dry Saturday, we threw away rain-warped box after rain-warped box of crap. Some stuff had been my grandmother's and Charlie couldn't part with, so it got repackaged in a clean storage box that would undoubtedly become rain-warped within a season. Hidden in the back, though, the boys had sniffed out Charlie's old weight set from when he had just joined the force. Ten minutes later, the guys had accepted it as payment and loaded it onto the back of my truck so it could be delivered to Jake's garage.

Working out on the bench became somewhat of an obsession between the three guys, especially for Quil, and Jake routinely had to kick him out so that we could retain our make-out spot. By the end of the summer, when Jake, Quil, and Embry had become noticeably muscular, word of the weight bench had spread and every male adolescent in La Push wanted to work out on it. Over the next few months, Jake's garage became a local teenage hang-out. Guys went to work out or help Jake with the vehicles he always seemed to have in there or just to hang out. Girls came because their boyfriends did or because there was bound to be a good-looking guy with his shirt off.

After a while, all of the less dedicated guys stopped showing up and there got to be a small group of "regulars": Jake and I, Quil, Embry, Sam and Leah, Jared and Kim, Paul and Rachel, and Seth. Rachel, Jake's sister, was the oldest of all of us and she was robbing the cradle by dating Paul. She wasn't around much that first year because she was finishing up her degree at UDub. She was two years older than Sam and Leah, though Leah was in a grade below Sam. He had been taking the year off to work so that they could go off to school together. Leah, Jared, Kim, and I were seniors; Jake, Quil, Embry, and Paul were juniors; and Seth, Leah's brother and the baby of the group, was a freshman.

Even though they each used the machine throughout the week, Sunday mornings became the time that they all worked out together. After a while, I took on the responsibility of feeding the guys and their girlfriends Sunday brunch. Thus, Bella's Special Breakfast was created: four eggs, three pancakes, four sausage links, four bacon strips, hash browns, and toast. As we grew up and moved away for school, beer replaced soda in the cooler, but our Sunday morning tradition lived on.

"So...," Seth said with a lop-sided grin as I poured his pancakes, "_Forks,_ Knives, & Spoons?"

I smiled, sheepishly. "Shut up, Seth. I like my little inside joke." I didn't tell him that I also got a twisted pleasure out of saying "Welcome to Forks" when people came in.

"And do _they_ know?" He cocked his head towards the kitchen door. I assumed he was referring to Emmett and Jasper.

"They don't know _anything,_" hoping he understood that I was referring to _everything_ in my past, "and I'd like to keep it that way." He bit his lip and raised his eyebrows, but slowly nodded.

I poured him some orange juice as I waited for the sausage to finish. "How are your mom and Charlie?"

He rolled his eyes. "Pssh, don't ask me. That's what telephones are for, Bells." He was right. It had been months since I'd talked to my dad.

"How's...everyone?" I asked, carefully, as I piled everything onto three plates and put them in front of Seth along with butter, syrup, jam, and ketchup.

"Mmm. Thanks, Bells." He poured syrup on his pancakes, took a bite, and started talking through his food. "Everyone's good. Sam and Leah have a two year-old girl named Natalie and Leah's pregnant with a boy that they're going to name Harry."

"Harry. They're naming him after your dad?" I smiled, despite feeling kicked in the gut that I didn't even know they had _had_ a daughter.

"Yup. Mom cried when they told her. Kim's pregnant, too, but this is their first." He shoveled hash browns into his mouth.

"Are they married?" I would be shocked if she and Jared hadn't gotten married after all this time, especially if they were expecting a baby.

"Uh huh. They've been married for about a year?" He asked himself, thinking back. Probably remembering the wedding. I'm sure my invitation got lost in the mail.

"And Paul and Rachel?" I was trying to change the subject. "Still fucking and fighting?" The term was entirely too accurate. When they weren't groping each other publicly, which had gotten Paul's ass kicked by Jacob on more than one occasion, they were fighting about _everything_. They once "broke-up" after arguing about the best way to get ketchup out of a bottle. They "got back together" on the beach later that night.

He took a huge bite of eggs, snorting as he nodded. "Yeah." That's nice. It's good to know _some_ things haven't changed.

"What about the kids from Forks?"

"Well, Mike took over the store, you knew that, though, right?" I nodded. He had gone to community college for his AA, but took over as assistant store manager to work for his parents right after.

"Jessica partied too much at school and after five years and no degree, her parents made her come back home."

"Really?" That was pretty big gossip. Too bad for Jessica. She had been in some of my more advanced math classes in high school, so I knew she could have handled the work if she had tried.

"Yeah. She worked a lot of odd jobs for a while and then, a couple of years ago, her mom got her a job at the bank." Wow. Had everyone turned into their parents? I shouldn't judge. Maybe I had done the same thing, I had just turned into Renée.

"Ben works from home—"

"Yeah, I still keep in touch with Angela. He's a computer programmer, right? She says he has to go into Seattle and Northern California every once in a while, but for the most part he's home. I know that she didn't want to leave town when her brothers while still there. She's some sort of office manager."

"Yeah, she's the office manager at Alimony." And then his eyes got really big, like he realized he had just screwed up, and he began devouring what was left of his pancakes with vigor.

"What's Ali..." And then it hit me. "_That's_ what he called his shop? Are you _kidding_ me?"

He swallowed quickly. "Calm down, Bells, it's just—"

But he was cut off by Jasper coming through the swinging doors, walking a few feet into the room. "Everything all right in here?" He directed the question at Seth but it was more of a warning than anything else.

"Sorry, Jasper. I shouldn't have raised my voice. Everything's fine." My voice came out cracking and soft.

He didn't look convinced and he didn't move. "Just so you know, Belle, we just got two tables."

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and nodded to let him know I'd heard him. "Just do me a favor and don't let Em give me the order, okay?" I wasn't in the mood for diner speak right now.

Jasper walked over to me and put his hands on my waist, leaning down, he whispered, "Can I talk to you real quick?"

I took my hands out of my face and nodded up at him. "I'll be right back, Seth."

Taking my hand, Jasper led us into the office. There wasn't much in here, a filing cabinet stuffed with old supply invoices and tax forms, a desk with a computer on it so that my laptop wasn't bogged down with diner stuff, a computer chair behind the desk, and a loveseat across from it. We sat on the couch. "I'm really okay, Jasper. I'm just..." I struggled to find the right word. Sad? Lonely? Feeling abandoned? "Homesick, I guess." And then I leaned into the one-arm embrace he had me in and cried softly into the crook of his shoulder. When he tried to soothe me by running his fingers through my hair, my sobs became louder. "I c-can't go back...and every-everybody's moo-oved on...and...and I'm _missing_ it!"

A few seconds later there was a knock on the other side of the door and a small, "Bells?"

Jasper stiffened and held me closer. I put a hand on his chest and shook my head as I pulled back to talk to him. "It's really not his fault." I wiped the tears from my face and said, "It's open, Seth."

He stuck his head in, looking guilty as hell. "I'm sorry, Bells, I wasn't thinking. It's just a stupid joke Leah made up and it kinda stuck."

Leah had made it up? That hurt. We were always the closest of the girlfriends. I was in her wedding for Christ's sake. I just wiped away the new tears and put on a smile. "It's okay, Seth. I get it." From the kitchen, I could hear Emmett calling out for us. I slapped my thighs before standing up. "Order's in." I ran my fingers through the still-sitting Jasper's hair with a smile, letting him know that I was okay, and gave Seth a hug as I passed him in the door frame. "C'mon, Seth. You can watch me work."

As I cooked, I asked him how _his_ life was going, feeling extremely guilty that I hadn't started there. He told me about earning his degree in accounting from Washington State and I good-naturedly ripped on his school for calling UDub their biggest rival when UDub's biggest rival is Oregon. We talked about the distance between the campus and La Push and he told me about the general differences between the Olympic Peninsula and Eastern Washington. Then we swapped general college stories, getting drunk at parties, dealing with roommates, and pulling all-nighters.

"So, why'd you go into accounting?" The last time I had talked to him, he was still undeclared.

"I wanted a career that would let me provide a service when I moved back home. Everybody's got to do taxes, right? I bet half the businesses in La Push and Forks, and even Port Angeles and Sequim are paying too much just because they do their own and don't know the loopholes." I smiled as he spoke because he sounded just like Jake.

Jacob never thought he was smart enough to be a doctor or a lawyer and give back to the town that way, but if he could open a shop and save a family some money because they didn't have to take their car to Dowling's and get ripped off, he figured it was a win-win situation. He got to work on cars like he loved and help someone out at the same time.

Seth kept on talking, "Plus, if I ever decide to move to Seattle or Tacoma or even Spokane, I'll be able to work there just as easily."

_ That_, however, sounded _nothing_ like Jake. Ephraim Black, Jacob's great-grandfather, had been the last chief of the small Quileute tribe. His grandson, Jacob's dad, Billy, is now one of the tribe elders. There are other elders, like Seth's mom, Sue, and Quil's grandfather, Old Quil, but they all generally defer to Billy as the man who should be chief. When Billy dies, Jake will take his place on the council, and _he_ will become the unofficial leader.

It's not his responsibility to be a leader of his people that will stop Jake from ever leaving, though. It's the land itself. He loves wandering for hours in the woods, knowing that, if he gets lost, he can follow the scents and sounds of the ocean and find his way out. He jogs down the beaches every morning in the fog and tries to watch the sunset from their shores every night. When he was a kid, he carved his name on one of the beached tree trunks, knowing it would always be there, and he scratches it a little deeper every year on his birthday, just in case. A part of him wishes that he could still become chief, but _only_ because he wants to be buried with all the others on top of James Island. Whoever loves Jake does so knowing that he will never love anything or anyone as much as he loves La Push.

Seth was yawning as I came back in the kitchen from delivering a couple of the typical hamburger and fries dinner meals out to Emmett. "Tired?"

He nodded while yawning, again. "I've been on the road all day. Started out from Portland around eight in the morning."

"You've been driving all day?"

He pulled out a set of keys from his front jean pocket and dangled them from his finger. I instantly recognized the Harley-Davidson key chain, having bought it for Jake in my first year of college. I was surprised it had survived the break up. "Riding, actually. Jake lent me his bike." His head shot up as he realized it was the first time he had said his name to me, and searched my face for a reaction. I admit, I flinched when I heard it, but I say it so many times a day in my own head that hearing it out loud isn't _that_ upsetting. Of course, it's upsetting to realize that I think about him that much.

I just went on like nothing had happened. "Where are you staying?"

He grinned winningly at me. "Your couch."

I couldn't help but smile back. "How about my guest room?" I suggested, dryly.

"Even better, Bells."

I walked him out to the front and explained my schedule for the next few days while Jasper wrote down the directions to my place. I told him that I'd be working on the 4th of July because we always get a slew of customers in the evenings every holiday and I felt bad because I knew he'd be missing the huge blow-outs up in La Push. I asked him, as I walked him outside, why he chose to come down to LA now.

"I didn't really plan it or anything. I literally walked out after finishing my CPA test, borrowed the bike, and hit the road while I still could. I'm heading east after this, probably to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon...maybe Vegas." He wiggled his eyebrows at me. I laughed.

We said our goodbyes and I headed back in to my "date" with Emmett. Every Thursday, Emmett works overnight with me, from 11pm to 7am instead of his usual early-morning 2am to 10am shift. He's taken to calling them "dates" because he only works with me, unlike all the other days when he works a few hours with Esme. Em, the sweet man that he is, usually plans things for our time together. Sometimes he'll bring in a movie that we can watch together during the down times, sometimes it's a board game, and once he even brought pornographic Jell-O molds. He did it just to make me blush, of course, but black cherry Jell-O tastes great no matter what form it's in. A few hours later, when every appliance's handles and knobs had been decorated with a lanyard, Jasper called it a night. Thankfully, his Texas residency helped secure him graduate school housing on campus, so he never has to walk very far to get home. He told me once that he used to have a bike when he was in the Army, but he sold it before coming out to California.

When Esme came in early to relieve me, I took her up on her offer for once so that I could get back to my place in time to make Seth a good breakfast before he went sight-seeing. Though she was surprised, I left without explaining myself, knowing that Emmett would make sure the story was told, complete with exaggerations and a reenactment of my fainting spell, I'm sure.

Traffic was hellish going home and as I merged onto the bumper-to-bumper freeway, I sighed and leaned back against the headrest on my seat, only to be met by a dull throb in the exact location of the new bump adorning my skull. The pain brought the memories of the past 24 hours rushing back to me.

I had slept with Jasper, again. I knew we really needed to stop doing that, but I also knew that we wouldn't. I wasn't sure why I was even comfortable having sex with a man who I wasn't in a relationship with. When I was with Jacob, it had taken us a while before we had made that leap. We lost our virginities during Spring Break of my senior year and I wondered sometimes if we wouldn't have waited if there hadn't been the impending doom of my graduation and a separation in the fall when I moved away to school hanging over our heads. Not that I was complaining. We loved each other. Plus, it was a damn fun summer. Still, I don't think I could have given myself to Jake if I hadn't trusted and loved him as completely as I had. Maybe, though, that was only because I was an inexperienced teenager. Though I may trust Jasper, I don't love him like I loved Jake. I wonder if being in a friends-with-benefits relationship makes me a slut. Or is this just what people resort to when their forevers are taken away?

Seeing Seth today only made the aching to see Jake worse. Though they look nothing alike, they have the same smile. Open, warm, caring. Quil and Embry will always be Jake's best friends, but the relationship between him and Seth is almost brotherly. Part of that, I'm sure, has to do with the fact that Seth lost his dad as a freshman in high school and Jake took it upon himself to make sure Seth was coping. Seth looks up to Jacob, so it didn't surprise me when he gave his "giving back" speech earlier. Seth was in a bad position after Jake and I originally split up. Jake might be the closest thing he has to an older brother, but I'm practically his step-sister. In fact, the last I heard, my dad and his mom were living together. He was always good about spending time with both of us, though, and when I told him that I never felt betrayed by his loyalty to Jake, he told me that Jake had told him the same thing. Jake and I really did try to keep the peace after our break-up. I think there was too much love between us to not share a smile when we ran into each other, even though it hurt, or to try and tear our friends apart when we had spent years as the glue holding them together. The love that remained was the reason I had once thought we'd end up together again someday.

Thoughts of Jake, La Push, and Forks kept bumping around in my head for the rest of the drive home and they didn't stop as I cooked breakfast and made small talk with Seth and got ready for bed. So, I was surprised that what flashed in my mind right before I fell asleep was a perfect likeness of a pair of pale green eyes and the realization that I still didn't know the name of the man behind them.

I didn't see much of Seth over the next few days, except when we passed each other in the mornings and when he came by the diner each night to visit. He spent the Fourth of July by himself at the beach near the diner and came by a few hours after dark for a late dinner. Although he had been a shy preteen, the confidence that he gained along with his muscles and the reputation he had gotten by hanging out with older kids had him beating the girls off when he was a teenager. I doubt that that had stopped when he went away to college. He and Quil were the two womanizers of the group, though their techniques and taste in women couldn't have been more different. Quil would set his eyes on the prettiest girl in the room and worked the whole night trying to impress her into his pants. Seth made friends with everyone, charming the whole room until he had a gaggle of girls vying for his attention. Jake and Seth's personalities were so similar that I knew it would have been just as easy for him to pick up girls if he were single. That thought used to make my ego swell when I was younger. I used to think, he could have anyone and he picked _me_. Now it just made me nauseas.

When Seth told me he'd be alone at the beach all day, I knew it wouldn't take long until he would be invited to every party up and down the surf, so I wasn't surprised when he came in for dinner with a girl on his arm who was wearing a barely-there dress over what I'm sure was a skimpy bikini. Her name was Kristy, "with a 'K'" Seth was eager to inform me with a wink, and even I had to admit that she couldn't have been the ditsiest girl at the beach. Then again, Seth had always been better than Quil at taking both a girl's body _and _brain into account before taking them home. I just wished that his home wasn't _my_ guest room. They left after he proved his manliness to her by eating one of my special breakfasts, saying that he needed the carbs for all the drinking he was going to be doing at the party in the Valley they were heading off to. I had to laugh because I was sure he didn't even know where the Valley was. I kissed Seth on the cheek, made him promise not to drink and drive, confirmed our sight-seeing plans for the next day, and then they were off.

The next night I treated Seth to dinner at a sushi bar in Old Town Pasadena. He had told me he used to eat it all the time when he was off at school but hadn't since he had been at home, as getting any near La Push meant taking the ferry from Port Angeles into British Columbia. As we drank our Asahi beers, he asked about my life in LA. I told him about my house, the traffic, and how well the diner was doing. He offered to do my taxes next quarter.

Then, very unsubtly, he mentioned with a wink how close Jasper and I seem to be. I sighed and took a long drag from my beer's neck, before setting it down on the bar and turning towards Seth. "If I'm honest with you, it stays between us." His eyes widened in anticipation and he nodded. I sighed. "Jasper and I are..." How could I say it in the least crude way possible?

"Fuck buddies." He supplied for me, casually, and my mouth fell open. "It's pretty obvious, Bells." Shit. If he knows, does everyone else in the diner know? "I mean, I've seen you be friends with guys for years and you act normal with Emmett, so I know there's nothing there. But you and Jasper just touch a little too much, even though it's obvious you're trying to hide it from everyone. You don't look at him the way you used to look at Jake, though, so I know it's not love." He shrugged and then murmured, "That's all Lizzie is."

I gasped in response to hearing _her_ name, and my eyes widened when the implications of what he said caught up to me. "What did you say?"

He rolled his eyes, "Oh, c'mon, Bells. Did you really think he could move on that easily?" Yes, of course, I did. I had _seen_ just how easily he had moved on._ "_He purposefully picked someone that he could "be with" and not have to actually _be_ with. I mean, the girl lives in Seattle. They see each other once or twice a month, if that."

This was dangerous territory. I desperately wanted to know more, especially now that I knew it may not be so bad to hear it. "Seattle?"

He nodded, taking a drink from his own beer. "That's where they met, at the auto show he always goes to with Embry. She's actually pretty into cars." That was a stab to the heart. Jake had tried to take me to that car show every year and I had only ever went once, the first year I had gone away to school. Six hours of boredom and two blistered feet later, I had decided that it wasn't worth the cost of my ticket and had never gone again. For the next three years, I would only look forward to the annual car show because I knew that it was a weekend he'd be spending with me in my apartment. After we split, I regretted not going with him. It would have meant precious more hours with my love while I had him. I regretted a lot of little things like that in the beginning. Meeting Lizzie there only rubbed the cruel irony of the situation in my face even more.

"Her dad is some big shot at Paccar across the lake in Bellevue, so she grew up around engines. They make big rigs," he added in response to my confused face. Great. She's rich. Not that Jake isn't, I guess. "She works for them, too. I don't really know what she does there, though. Anyway, she's always working so she wants Jake to drive out to Seattle for her, but he never does. They don't see each other often and it doesn't seem like he minds very much."

I tried to keep my elation to a minimum, reminding myself that even if he didn't really want to be with _her_, he's already told me that he definitely doesn't want to be with _me_. "But they've been together for over a year, right? There has to be more to it than just that. Maybe you just don't know the whole story."

"Maybe," he shrugged. "But it's like you and Jasper, I can just tell. He doesn't love her. And if after a year he doesn't, I doubt that's going to change."

I couldn't help it. Emboldened by the idea that my ex's relationship was just as shitty as I had hoped it was and the beer I've been chugging, I asked the one question that I promised myself I wouldn't. "How is he, Seth?" And because the cat was out of the bag, I just kept going. I wanted to know. I wanted to know _everything_. "I just...I miss him so much it hurts and I just need to know that he's okay. That he's happy. I mean, he's got his shop, right? He's happy, right?"

Seth slowly shook his head and ran his fingers through his short, black hair as he laughed without humor. "Why do I have a feeling I'm in for the same conversation with him when I get home?" It seemed like a rhetorical question directed at himself, so I didn't answer. He finally leveled his gaze at me and searched my face as he asked, "Are you sure you want to do this, Bells?"

I nodded instantly, without hesitation. Once it was obvious he was going to open up, I started looking around for the waitress, because I was pretty sure that I was going to need another beer for what was coming next.

For the next hour and a half, I spewed question after question out at Seth and he answered them all. Afterwards, I knew all the small details of his life that I'd been missing. I knew the model of the new car he drives along with the old one he's rebuilding and I planned on Googling both the second I got home. I knew that his hair was short again, because that's how he had it when he met Lizzie and she doesn't want him growing it out. I know from experience that Jacob looks a hell of a lot hotter with long hair and I felt irrationally happy that she's missing out on the sexier version of him. I knew that he had gotten his ear pierced a few months after I moved, but took it out when all the guys razzed him for it. Hell, I even knew which street corner his garage sat on. I laughed when Seth told me that doing his books was a pain in the ass because Jake can't bring himself to collect half of the overdue payments he's owed. "You were right about the George Bailey thing, Bells," Seth said after that and I smiled the first smile I have ever had in response to someone talking about something in one of my books. I smiled because I _know_ I was right about him being a modern-day George Bailey. I smiled because I know him so well..._still_.

"Can I ask you something, Bells?" I was still riding my information high when I nodded and finished off the last of my fourth beer. "Do you know what was up with him towards the end of last summer?"

I decided to play stupid. "Why would I know?"

He raised his eyebrows at me and I knew he saw right through me. "He fell apart for a few weeks. He stayed home and wouldn't talk to anyone or go to work and then one day he called the guys up around midnight and made us drink with him. We went along with it only because it was the first time that he had talked to any of us and we were afraid he'd shut us out, again. Anyway, he got wasted that night and called Lizzie and broke up with her in front of all of us, but it was really obvious that she wasn't the reason he was drinking, especially because they'd only been dating for a few weeks. It was really weird because he was being so cold to her and it wasn't like him. He stayed home drinking for a week after that until we had to get Billy involved. I don't know what he said to him, but the next Monday he was at work, pretending like nothing had happened. Look, I know that the only thing that could fuck Jake up that much is you. No offense. So, what happened?"

I knew that he had been watching me as he spoke, reading my face for clues. I didn't care enough to try hide my emotions. Besides, I was too busy berating myself for the hell I had put Jacob through, that we had _both_ put each other through. When I finally did look up, Seth was staring at me, obviously anxious for my answer. "I...uh...I sent him an advanced copy of the second book."

"Oh!" Things seemed to be clicking into place in his head. "That explains his reaction when it came out...or his lack of a reaction, really. But then why did he break down two weeks later?" _That_ was not something I was willing to talk about. I gave an unconvincing shrug and he didn't push the issue.

Late in the morning the next day, I stood in my driveway as Seth bent down to wrap me up in a good-bye hug. It lasted much longer than normal and when he finally set me down, my face was wet. "I'll miss you, Seth."

"I know, Honeybells, but I promise we'll see each other soon." I scoffed, but he ignored it. "Thanks for letting me crash here."

I laughed once. "Like I had a choice." He smiled unabashedly. "Those sheets will be burning before you're back on the freeway, you know?"

"How do you know we didn't use _your_ bed?" He winked and then dodged my arm, laughing at the revulsion in my face before gave me another hug. After one last kiss on my cheek, he slung his duffel bag across his back and hopped on the bike. He reached over and ran the back of his hand on my cheek, inadvertently wiping some tears away. "Want me to tell him anything?"

Yeah. Tell him I love him. Tell him I miss him. Tell him I want to come home and be with him forever. I shook my head. "What haven't I said, Seth?"

He shrugged a shoulder and nodded. "I guess you're right." He kicked the stand away and stood up as he straddled the bike. "You really need to call Charlie, though. It's important."

That surprised me. "Okay."

"I changed your oil for you, by the way. Boss's orders." I didn't know if he was talking about Charlie or Jake and I didn't ask. I'd rather assume it was Jacob, still trying to look out for me.

"Thanks, Seth. For everything."

"Don't mention it." He kicked the bike to life. "Take care of yourself, Bells."

"You, too. Be safe. Wear condoms," I added with a smirk.

He laughed and turned the bike around until it faced the street. "See ya later, Bells."

I smiled sadly at him. "Bye, Seth."

Back in the house, I put both of our sheets in the wash, just in case he hadn't been joking. I tidied up a bit, cleaned out my fridge, and vacuumed the floors before I finally bit the bullet, took a deep breath, and called my dad. We exchanged pleasantries and I asked after Sue before he brought Seth's visit up.

"That's actually why I'm calling, Seth said you had something important to tell me."

"Actually, there's something important I need to _ask _you."

"Shoot, Dad."

"How do you feel about coming home in a few months?"

* * *

_Leah & Seth Fic Recommendations:_

/s/4534277/1/**East**: Leah runs away to London after Sam's wedding. Funny.

/s/4513209/1/**Well**_**This**_**Sucks**_**Life**_**According**_**to**_**Seth**: Seth's journal, post-Breaking Dawn. Funny.

/s/4835861/1/**The**_**War**: Sequel to **The Healer**, a Renesmee/Jacob fic. Leah imprints on a werewolf prince in the beginning stages of an all-out metaphysical war. Angsty.


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